Tag Archives: Exile

I am so much more excited about BBKSD than my circle. Everyone likes it. People at this point have heard of Open Mike Eagle due to the breakout success of 2014’s Dark Comedy (and 2016’s huge improvement Hella Personal FilmFestival). He is officially on the bubble of everyone who follows music and BBKSD shows yet another improvement. That is a good enough take but not from my angle. If you follow the incredible X-Men references in the opening track (Legendary Iron Hood https://genius.com/Open-mike-eagle-legendary-iron-hood-lyrics ). The song is a perfect example of Mike pushing everything to the hilt. He’s always had great hooks and this time they are prettier, better sung, catchier (see Hymnal) the beats are full of strange sounds coming together over his buttery flow. His lyrics take comic imagery and push it 38 degrees to the left so that they become intensely meaningful.

On Happy Wasteland Day he is slick and smooth weaving zombie imagery and the connotation of dystopia into his everyday life “When the king is a garbage person/I might wanna lay down and die/Power down on my darkest urges/Keep my personal crown up high.” As the song goes on his tone gets more and more urgent as the terror of everyday violence punctures the force field. The last verse his voice is post mortem, dead monotone and fading. It is as much an emotional journey as Velvet Underground’s Heroin.

If you’re a strict rap guy who needs BARS just press play on Brick Body Complex which is a sensational set fire to the BS hook with dizzying skill from his pen in the verses “Chi Town in my building code/Stood here for ten million snows/wind chill is all in my bones/ Indivisible in divisible kids and criminals young and old/No radiator my dungeon cold.” That song sets my sensory on overload and it isn’t even my favorite.

I would change nothing on BBKSD but boy do I come back specifically to 95 Radios. Toy Light and Has-Lo created a beat that chimes a spotlight on the verses (Has-Lo destroys verse 1). Mike’s second verse teases fun growing up references but can’t run away from the hard thoughtful personal truth “I miss my old hood/ miss my homies/is lonely/ The radio host is like they know me.” The pain isn’t just in the verse it’s in the delivery, the chorus drips with the visual image of a kid closing his eyes and trying to hear a rap song so he doesn’t have to think so damn much.

When I was in school (trying to become a better writer) teachers routinely told me to ignore what I did well and focus on improving my faults. As a natural antagonist the first thing I did was push even harder on my strengths leaving the rest for later. Sometimes if I pushed hard enough I could accomplish something really surprising and that was the best feeling. BrickBodyKidsStillDaydream gives me that feeling for Mike. No one gets to show him his lane.

So its 2005. Last year Mobb Deep put out Amerikaz Nightmare which was a superb album but destroyed internally by Jay-z who pulled strings to keep the radio/video play down. 50 Cent signs Mobb Deep which is a pretty big deal because his first album in 2003 (Get Rich or Die Tryin) went DIAMOND and his follow up in 2005(The Massacre) is about to go DIAMOND again. Not only does 50 want to sign Mobb Deep but he wants to do a song with them that will be a smash hit, he wants to place this on the movie about his come up, starring him, called Get Rich Or Die Tryin. This is really the last shot Havoc & Prodigy will have at the limelight. Their brand of dark sinister east coast goon rap only really exists in a profitable way on G-unit.

So Pearly Gates is totally designed to be that smash hit. Exile does the beat and it is the best of him. The sample flutters and then slows, smears and transforms into a cutting piano loop with knocking bass. 50 is the first voice you hear and he lays out the blueprint for what this song should accomplish. He weaves one of his infectious chorus’s under the clever conception that he could talk his way into heaven. 50 wants this song to be hardcore but empowering in the style that his movie will be, that his life is (to a certain extent). He manages to warn his enemies they can die at any time while looking humbly at where he is; amazed at the platform he has reached.

Havoc is an incredibly intelligent emcee and builds on it. He uses the religious imagery to his advantage “The dogs bark and since all the souls I took, moms pray for me with her right hand on the good book.” His verse is about how lucky he is to be alive and the divine relation to that luck. Everything is going well until Prodigy shows up and says

“Now homey if I go to hell and you make it to the pearly gates,

Tell the boss man we got beef

And tell his only son, I’m a see him when I see him

And when I see him, I’m a beat him like a movie”

In that short a span of time it’s basically all over. Prodigy threatens Christ flips off god and declares “Look, we a new breed in 2006 we don’t give a F_ about that religious B*&^S#$.” On the Drink Champs podcast 50 Cent says he was staggered by this and Ma$e was there at the time with his own theory. You can see it developing in Prodigy’s verse “Man my life is painful; pray to angels I’m praying to myself hoping I ain’t got to spank you.” Ma$e told 50 that since P had suffered Sickle Cell his whole life he’d dealt with spitting blood and passing out and basically been in pain every day. P was having a moment in that verse, maybe Exile had laced that beat too well. It sounded pristine and angelic and having lived with pain in his blood his whole life with no explanation as to why he had to tear it down to the floor. He looked right at the beat and said how dare you let us suffer “For leaving us out to dry on straight poverty.”

50 Pulled that song from the movie. He did his best to help Mobb Deep (doing 6 features on their G-Unit debut Blood Money) and Pearly Gates still came out but it was cut and chopped all through P’s verse.

In four lines Prodigy spit in the face of his best opportunity to get back on top(Blood Money came out in 2006 and Mobb Deep didn’t have a follow up album until 2014 and that was not a proper one) I honestly don’t know if it was a mistake, for him. For Prodigy, I’m sure that verse means a lot and the ability to reach up and choke your comfort is what Mobb Deep was always about.